Matador
The Nazi Buzz Bomb Goes Nuclear
Explosive Power
50 kt.
Hiroshima Equivalent Factor
3.33x
Dimensions
39.5 ft. x 4.5 ft.
Weight
Approx. 6 tons
Year(s)
1952-1962
Range
250 miles (A version), 620 miles (C version)
Purpose
First surface-to-surface nuclear cruise missile
About the Matador
Shaped like a jet fighter airplane, the Matador is the same size as an airplane, is just as fast as an airplane, and is propelled by an airplane’s jet engine. But it is not an airplane, it is a Matador, a winged, pilotless bomb carrying a nuclear warhead. The Matador has no landing gear as it will never land and it takes off from the back of a truck, zero-length launch ramp tilted high, with a grotesque-looking rocket booster attached temporarily under the tail to thrust the weapon skyward.
The Matador isn’t trying to dodge the bull as it is the bull, a test model in an Air Force training video painted bullseye red as it files above the blue Caribbean, guided along its path by a network of radio operators who keep the flying bomb flying along its course as it passes them by.
The Nazi buzz bomb that terrorized London and Antwerp in World War II bears more than a passing resemblance to the Matador. The Matador is the very offspring of the Vergeltungswaffe 1, the Vengeance Weapon, a tool of terror used by the Germans starting in 1944 after it was clear they were losing the war—an attempt to break the morale of the British and its allies.
The design of the Matador is an improved version of the V1, reverse-engineered based on captured schematics. The wing on the Matador sits on the shoulders of the fuselage rather than sticking out from the sides, a design change to accommodate the launch platform. The engine, a different model than that of the V1, doesn’t buzz like it used to, and instead of an autopilot the missile is guided by line-of-sight radio beams. But even a glance at the two shows the family lineage. The Matador is a nuclear buzz bomb, its terror made even more terrible.
Like some grim game of Civilization we are rapidly moving up the Technology Tree—Chemistry to Gunpowder to High Explosives to Nuclear Weapons—each pathway combining with others, the merging with Flight and with Radio. The Matadors are flying robots bringing a local apocalypse sent from men in comfy chairs in darkened rooms sipping their Coa-Colas, men comfortable in their knowledge that if we weren’t the first to send the Matador into the sky against the Soviets then the Soviets would not hesitate to be the first to send theirs into the sky against us.
Gallery
Nukemap
NUKEMAP is a web-based mapping program that attempts to give the user a sense of the destructive power of nuclear weapons. It was created by Alex Wellerstein, a historian specializing in nuclear weapons (see his book on nuclear secrecy and his blog on nuclear weapons). The screenshot below shows the NUKEMAP output for this particular weapon. Click on the map to customize settings.
Videos
Click on the Play button and then the Full screen brackets on the lower right to view each video. Click on the Exit full screen cross at lower right (the “X” on a mobile device) to return.
Further Reading
- Wikipedia, Atomic Archive, and Designation Systems.
- A “Spotter’s Guide” to the Matador and the closely related Mace missile, from U.S. Air Force Tactical Missiles, by George Mindling and Robert Bolton, dedicated entirely to the Matador and Mace missiles. Scroll down for many interesting quotes and photographs.
- A photo of an unassembled Matador from Popular Mechanics (August 1954).
- The Space Force Museum at Cape Canaveral has recently unveiled its newly restored Matador. In 2001 they published a history (written by Roy McCullough) of the missile systems at the Cape, which includes the Matador in context with the history of missile systems in general and, starting on page 62, a detailed discussion of the Matador itself.
- Another history of US cruise missiles, including the Matador, at Greg Goebel’s AirVectors.net.
- Matadors were deployed to both Taiwan and South Korea. This “top secret” post was sent by Ambassador Rankin outlining his thoughts on transferring Matadors to Taiwan (within range of mainland China). This 1999 article, “Where They Were,” in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, summarizes these deployments.
- Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris wrote “A history of US nuclear weapons in South Korea” in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 2017.
- The Department of Defense has its own history of the Matador (and other cruise missiles). Many photos that I haven’t seen anywhere else–scroll down for an image of a Matador on a launch vehicle that has “tipped over,” cracking it in two.
- How the web used to be: A personal history of the Matadors at the Taipei Air Station in the late 1950s (the blog author posts photos of himself stationed there at the time but doesn’t give his name).
- The early arms race was a strange time as demonstrated by this proposal by The Martin Aircraft Company (the makers of the Matador) to attach a Matador to each wingtip of their XB-51 medium bomber. You have to see the drawings to believe it.
- Scale modelers are serious about their craft as you can see in this supposedly 1:48 scale Hawk Model Company build. Museums take models seriously, too. Here’s one, from a kit made by Topping Model, Inc., at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (though it is not on display).